


Inequity

by realfakedoors



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Keeping tags brief to avoid spoilers, M/M, Minor Allura/Lance (Voltron), Missing Scene, Moving On, POV Lance (Voltron), Spoilers for Season 8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-18 06:41:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16989969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/realfakedoors/pseuds/realfakedoors
Summary: Keith sees an inequity in the team, and wants to help fix it.A missing scene from the final episode. Spoilers for Season 8 of Voltron abound.





	Inequity

Wide awake, Lance studied the pattern of light over the ceiling. His face scales – _Marks of the Chosen_ – were glowing, still, after the Lions had taken off without them.

He wondered where they went, what his glowing marks meant, if not to remind him of her every time he looked at his own reflection – in the mirror, through puddles of rain, staring back at him now as he glanced to the tinted black windows overlooking Altea.

Lance wondered about a lot of things, since Allura died.

If he could have done something differently. If regret was a worthwhile emotion at all, when he couldn’t change anything. If he was doing the right thing, with himself, with her message of peace, with the other Paladins.

Lance wondered if Keith was happy, bouncing back-and-forth between the Blade of Marmora and Daibaazal. It seemed like enough responsibility to keep him busy, which was probably good – if all that chaotic energy in the guy stayed pent up, Lance knew it would never end well. With his Mom and Kolivan taking such active roles as the Galran representatives, he imagined they at least all saw each other fairly often, making up for lost time.

He wondered when Hunk and Shay would tie the knot, or where they might someday have their wedding. With the whole universe at their disposal, liberated at long last, there was no shortage of places that would jump at the chance to host the wedding of a Paladin of Voltron.

There was Pidge to wonder about, too, how her experimental artificial intelligence software was working in that funky little robot she’d built. The Holts had access to the most primo technology in the universe, literally, and with their completion of a teludav, there was no limits to what they might continue to discover.

Wondering about Coran usually made Lance smile, just because the man’s commitment was something to be admired, to never be taken for granted. He thought all too often of the fact that the advisor, Allura’s longest living companion, had been the only one of their seven who hadn’t had the chance to say goodbye.

Lance wondered what Shiro did during the days, if he missed Adam so much it reduced him to a state like how Lance felt some nights, or if he was happy enough with his new relationship that it stopped hurting so much. He very much wanted to ask Shiro about that – it was something he knew Shiro wouldn’t judge him for, but moreso, something that perhaps Shiro alone could understand out of the others. He’d come close a few times to asking, but the words were never there, the question not quite able to be formed.

If Allura was still here, she would probably know just what to say; she wove words of inspiration like a spinster threaded lies.

With a steady sigh, Lance glanced at the time. It’d been two hours since the Lions left, and still, sleep eluded him. He sat there for another fifteen minutes before something eventually changed.

Lance heard Keith before he saw him, which meant Keith wanted exactly two things.

One, Keith wanted to be heard.

After he’d returned to Voltron after the Blade of Marmora, Keith had been able to easily sneak up on any of them without even meaning to. He began to be more conscientious of his footfalls after that, sometimes to their advantage, and sometimes not. It reduced his sprinting strides to little more than the pitter-patter of rain; it made his tendency to pace while strategizing even more intense, like he could glide over the floors, a spectral version of their Black Paladin, or, if he so chose, he might pound the gunmetal beneath his feet with fierce anger, eliciting a specific reaction to his audience.

As for his his usual gait, well, to be honest – it sounded almost indistinguishable from anyone else’s, but Lance knew what to listen for when it came to Keith. No hesitation, no stopping, no faltering. Yep. That was Keith, alright.

And two, Keith wanted to talk.

Privately, presumably, seeing as it was an ungodly hour of the morning. Lance really wasn’t sure he could handle a conversation right now, but the thought of turning Keith away sounded even worse.

 _Knock knock_.

“Can I come in?”

Lance almost laughed – Keith didn’t even bother to ask if he was awake; in truth, Lance doubted anyone would be getting much sleep tonight.

“Sure thing, buddy,” he called, not bothering to change his posture when he heard the slight sound of metal sliding over itself, the door parting to reveal Keith. In Lance’s periphery, back-lit by the hallway, the man appeared little more than a shadow, a memory. “How you feeling?”

The same steady footsteps crossed the room and ended up stopping beside the bed, near enough that Lance could look up into the darkness of his eyes, could trace some of the familiar lines of pain and perseverance that had worn themselves into his features over the years.

“I was going to ask you that,” Keith said, his voice low as he leaned his lower back against the nightstand, on which the picture Beezer had taken of Lance and Allura sat proudly.

Lance closed his eyes momentarily, taking a deep breath. In the low-light of the bedroom, even through the weight of his eye lids, the lightest sheen of powdery blue still tinted the blackness of his vision.

It was perfect torture, if he were going to be honest about it.

This wasn’t like mourning Allura’s loss. Voltron had gone through that together, as a team, all of them, and even had the chance to say their goodbyes – this was something else, impossibly heavier. It was ten, twenty – a hundred times harder to explain because it was _bitter_ and he felt disgusted with himself for feeling such things at all. The whole subject had tethered to him like a terrible weight, hooks digging in the space between his ribs, and it refused to let him go. How dare he be even the smallest bit ungrateful after what they managed to accomplish?

The thought had his throat closing up, and Lance was suddenly very glad his eyes were closed. Keith didn’t need to see him like this; Lance didn’t want him to. Lance just wanted to be okay. He wanted to feel better, and his Mama told him time and time again, _el tiempo lo cura todo_ , but it’s been a year and he’s only feeling more confused – maybe not _worse_ , but he felt like things were slipping from his grasp, water leaking through his cupped hands.

He took the time to compose himself, it could have been an hour or a few minutes, he really didn’t know – but when he peeked through his eyes, he found Keith patiently waiting, looking straight ahead at the opposite wall.

“I don’t know,” Lance’s voice managed not to crack, but he had to pause to swallow the lump in his throat. “I just don’t know.”

Keith didn’t move, didn’t react. They stayed in each other’s quiet company for several seconds, when finally, their Black Paladin reached around and picked up the picture frame. Lance glanced at him, finding a small, fond smile on Keith’s expression.

“You know, Shiro’s told me about a million times, _patience yields focus_ ,” he spoke steadily, the quirk in his lips evening out, his brow steadily furrowing. “And I’d always found it the most helpful advice in the world when we were out there, fighting, risking everything, everyday. It felt… it was what I needed at the time, I think. I still need it. But…”

Lance blinked, watching as Keith’s eyes slipped closed, his expression turning pinched with… pain?

“But patience isn’t going to help here. We’re all moving forward, but... I hate seeing you like this, Lance.”

Sitting up, Lance at long last swung his legs over the bed and glared at Keith. “Don’t act like you don’t fucking miss her too, Keith. I’m not – I’m not being dramatic or over-emotional here, okay? I just – ”

“No, Lance, that’s not what I meant.” Keith stood up too, facing him, eye-to-eye. With a quiet shudder of metal, the picture frame was returned to its original spot, and Lance’s gaze flickered from before zeroing back in on Keith, a familiar flash of frustration in his glare.

“It’s this… this _inequity_ that I can’t stand, Lance, and being patient isn’t fixing it. I don’t mean to suggest that _I_ can be the one _to_ fix it, but I don’t want you to think you have to face it alone. Everyone else has come back from the war with something more than just scars, some fucked up version of a silver-lining – I’ve got my Mom, Hunk has Shay, Pidge got her family back, Shiro beat his fucking _disease_ , he was able to _live_ because of everything that happened. You’re… you’re the only one of who came back with less than you started with. When you lost Allura, you lost something more than the rest of us.”

Lance cringed, not realizing the hot tears had spilled over until he felt them drip from his chin, and he spun the other way, looking back out the window.

“That’s not – I don’t – ” he struggled to speak, because, how was it that Keith could _do_ this to him? How can he manage to be so socially inept, and yet, can read Lance so clearly? So easily?

“Don’t deny it, Lance. I know you’re happy on Earth, and I’m glad you’re doing what you want. But please, don’t – don’t think you’re alone.”

“I _know_ that,” he spat the words, choking on his breaths, glaring at the night. “I know that and don’t you think it fucking _eats me up inside_ that I know you guys are there for me but I can’t even come to you myself? You had to drag yourself out of bed just to see – I know I’m not alone and I can’t fucking stop _feeling_ like I am.”

“Lance.” Keith’s tone had changed, softened, no longer their fearless leader or even one of Lance’s best friends. This was vulnerable Keith, the one who had come out when they thought Shiro had been lost forever, the Keith that sounded terrified when he tried to explain the chaotic headspace that had been being trapped in the Quantum Abyss; the Keith that Lance had needed to face his fears of not being good enough, the Keith that, if he were honest, Lance had _always_ needed.

After several tense seconds, Lance still struggling to breathe and keep himself from crying even more, a hand came to his shoulder. Keith moved to stand beside him, grip firm.

“Lance, please, listen to me?”

He nodded. It was the best Lance could do at the moment.

“I can’t just…” the older boy began, and Lance’s eyes flew to his face again because – because did Keith’s voice just _waver_? He looked… hesitant. Unsure. All of things that Keith Kogane was never known to be.

“I’ve been patient for a long – a _long_ time – and when you told me you got your date with Allura, I was… I’ve always just wanted you to be happy, and seeing you happy was – it was the best feeling, Lance. Even if it wasn’t – we weren’t –” he sighed, pulling his fingers away and forming a fist. Keith glared at his own half-gloved hands for several moments. “I could live with that because it made you happy. I can basically live with any reality as long as you end up happy. It’s probably one of the things Allura and I had in common more than anything else.”

At a subconscious level, Lance was aware that his pulse had spiked, the heaviness in his chest giving way to the slightest bit of mercy, and bone-deep sag of relief in his body that bled out tension he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. The words still hadn’t quite fit together in the puzzle of his brain, but Keith’s voice was so… caring. So kind. It made his stomach hurt, in a weirdly satisfying way.

Releasing a small chuckle, Keith’s turned ninety-degrees so they were facing each other once again, and Lance’s breathing stopped entirely when a hand moved to his cheek, thumb brushing over his eye scale. The room was still barely lit, and the faint glow of his marks caught in the darkness of Keith’s eyes, casting tiny lights in the black reflecting pools.

“Lance, you trust me, right?”

A single breath fell from Lance’s mouth, a heartbeat, a syllable, a declaration, a promise.

“Yes.”

“I want to try something. If I’m wrong, you have every right to punch me, okay?”

Without waiting for a response, Keith tilted Lance’s chin up while his face moved forward, their noses brushing ever-so-slightly, lips pressing together with a warmth that felt like devouring the suns and stars, filled by a breadth of emotion that was wider than the span of the wings of Voltron, a whole second plane of reality opening on the other side of the kiss when they parted.

“I thought so,” Keith managed to look slightly smug, his hands still on Lance’s face, his gaze flickering back and forth from each of Lance’s cheekbones.

The glowing – it _stopped_.

“What – how did you – ?”

“It’s the same as the when the Blue Lion called to me in the desert, when this all began,” Keith said, only separated by inches. “I don’t know if it’s – if it’s the Lion, or you, or maybe… Allura. I’ve felt it, calling me, since you got these.”

This was too much, he couldn’t – did they _just kiss?_ Lance’s mind was positively reeling.

“K-Keith, what are you…?”

“I want you to be able to have a future like the rest of us. I want you to have a future _with_ the rest of us, Lance,” his voice was all fire, and Lance could practically feel the Red Lion’s frenzied power pulse between them. “You don’t have to feel alone anymore. I don’t expect you to do anything, change anything, or feel any certain way but – but I’ve felt this way for a long time and I needed you to know. You don’t need to feel alone, because you’ve never been alone. Never.”

Lance’s heart raced, aching in the cage of his chest, but not in the familiar way it had been for a year, not an ache of longing for a past – but longing for a _future_.

In the near-darkness, both boys startled when the color of his marks fluttered, and some sort of esoteric sense told Lance that it was this extra-sensory presence agreeing. It was wanting _him_ to agree with Keith.

Lance lowered his eyes and turned away, gaze searching for the image in the frame.

They had had so much to be afraid of that day, and still, they looked so happy. Was it so wrong to have wanted his own happy ending? For there to have been a dozen more dates, a hundred more? It was the story that ended with a ghost, a question, a haunting feeling of everything that  _should have been_.

_I’ll always be with you, Lance. And I’ll always love you._

But… _what could be_ was standing right behind him… all he had to was turn around. It was offering him a different ending, maybe not the easiest one, maybe not the one that should have been, but the one that still could be.

After a heavy silence, Keith finally spoke again, his voice gravelly and uneven. “I’ll… give you some space.”

The footsteps that moved away were quiet, and it occurred to Lance that Keith could slip away so silently it would be as if he’d never come at all. Lance could tell himself it was all a dream, some crazy hallucination.

Pursed lips, heart swapped place with his stomach, his pulse louder in his brain than his ability to think, Lance turned and caught him by the wrist.

“Actually… I’d rather you didn’t.”

Keith looked stunned for all of two seconds before he crooked a small, simple smile. No bells and whistles. No glowing reflection in his eyes, nothing unpredictable.

“I’d rather I didn’t, too.”

With a flutter in his chest – a genuine sense of thrill – Lance smiled, too.

“Now kiss me again, Mullet, before I change my mind.”

“There’s the Lance I know,” Keith said without any amount of shame, doing just as Lance requested, and their lips together felt like all the right kinds of wrongs, the best sort of accidents. It was something so simple, but like this, there was something – something complete about it. Like Lance could imagine himself, suddenly, for the first time, feeling this way in every reality – they could be normal college kids, not veterans of a war; they could be rivals all over again, or childhood best friends, or meet by a mistaken phone number; Keith could drive a motorbike instead of piloting a Lion, he could be a barista, or he could be Galran as his mother; Lance could be a prince or a peasant, a sniper, an artist, a full-blooded Altean; they could kiss in a cafe, under mistletoe, amongst the stars or leagues beneath the sea – somehow, he knew, no matter how it happened, it would be just like this, and it would feel just as right, just as wrong, just as imperfect as they were.

Maybe this – this moment, drawing away from the slight dryness of Keith's lips, meeting his dark gaze, witnessing that smile – maybe this wasn’t how Lance’s story was supposed to end.

But maybe Lance was okay with that.

 

**Author's Note:**

> _kick_


End file.
